177 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2024
    1. The 'polycrisis' is real enough. But it’s a surface level symptom of multiple, simultaneous phase transitions at the core of the ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ systems that define human civilisation – which together can be understood as a planetary phase shift. But if all we see and respond to is the polycrisis – the symptoms of this process as it weakens industrial structures – that will derail the planetary phase shift to a new life cycle.

      for - comparison - to - book - The Ascent of Humanity - chapter 8 - The Gaian Birthing - Charles Eisenstein - quote - making sense of the polycrisis - a symptom of multiple phase transitions - (see below) - The 'polycrisis' is real enough. - But it’s a surface level symptom - of multiple, simultaneous phase transitions at the core of the ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ systems that define human civilisation - which together can be understood as a planetary phase shift. - But if all we see and respond to is the polycrisis - the symptoms of this process as it weakens industrial structures - that will derail the planetary phase shift to a new life cycle.

      comparison - to - book - The Ascent of Humanity - chapter 8 - The Gaian Birthing - Charles Eisenstein - Ahmed's writing about the polycrisis masking the planetary phase shift is very reminiscent of Charles Eisenstein's writing in the Ascent of Humanity in which he compares the great transition we are undergoing to - the perilous journey a neonate takes as it leaves the womb and enters the greater space awaiting

      to - book - The Ascent of Humanity - Chapter 8 - The Gaian Birthing - Charles Eisenstein - https://hyp.is/r8scTpG_Ee-gLTujlli5hQ/charleseisenstein.org/books/the-ascent-of-humanity/eng/the-gaian-birthing/

    2. for - rapid whole system change - Nafeez Ahmed - planetary phase shift - Nafeez Ahmed - planetary adaptive cycle - Nafeez Ahmed - essay - The End of Scarcity? From ‘Polycrisis’ to Planetary Phase Shift - Nafeez Ahmed - 2024 Oct 16 - to - book - The Ascent of Humanity - chapter 8 Self and Cosmos: The Gaian Birthing - stillborn and the perilous journey through the womb - Charles Eisenstein

      summary - This is a good article that makes sense of the inflection point that humanity now faces as it contends with multiple existential crisis - It summarizes the complexity of our polycrisis and its precarity and lays the theory for looking at the polycrisis from a different perspective: - as a planetary phase shift towards the potential end of scarcity and the next stage of our species evolution - Through the lens of ecologist Crawford Stanley Holling's lens of the adaptive cycle of ecological population dynamics, - and especially his 2004 paper "From Complex Regions to Complex Worlds" - Nafeez extends Holling's argument that we are undergoing a planetary adaptive cycle in which the back-loop is the dying industrial era. - In this sense, it is reminiscent of the writings of Charles Eisenstein in his book "The Ascent of Humanity", chapter 8: Self and Cosmos:, The Gaian Birth. - Eisenstein uses the the perilous journey of birth through the womb door as a metaphor of the transition we are currently undergoing.

      to - paper - From Complex Regions to Complex Worlds - Crawford Stanley Holling - 2004 - https://hyp.is/KYCm2pFrEe-_PEu84xshXw/www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art11/main.html?ref=ageoftransformation.org - book - The Ascent of Humanity - Chapter 8 - The Gaian Birthing - Charles Eisenstein - https://hyp.is/r8scTpG_Ee-gLTujlli5hQ/charleseisenstein.org/books/the-ascent-of-humanity/eng/the-gaian-birthing/

    3. Our most powerful asset will be the collective capability to recognise the dynamics of the planetary phase shift now underway, its unprecedented risks and unfathomable opportunities, and most crucially, its role as a precursor to the next stage in human and planetary evolution as one and the same thing.

      for - similar to - polycrisis and planetary phase shift - Charles Eisenstein's metaphor of birth process - dangerous passage through the womb door

    1. for - rapid whole system change - book - The Ascent of Humanity - Charles Eisenstein

      Summary - Annotation was not available when in first read this book - It is a book worthy of full annotation as it is so important to the existential polycris we now face - I was reminded of it as I was annotating Nafeez Ahmed's essay:

    1. Perhaps I need to argue more with the authors and the content, as Adler & van Doren also recommend.

      This might be a limitation in (the way I do) Zettelkasten. Because I am not writing in the margins and not engage in "tearing up" the book, I am less inclined to argue against/with the work.

      Maybe I need to do this more using bib-card. Further thought on implementation necessary...

      Perhaps a different reason is that I like to get through most books quickly rather than slowly. Sometimes I do the arguing afterward, within my ZK.

      I need to reflect on this at some point (in the near future) and optimize my processes.

    1. Beginners' courses or introductory texts are also designed in this way.What one does not or hardly learn, however, are conceptual contexts and, aboveall, problems to which the texts try to give an answer.

      One must read analytically (cf Adler & van Doren) in order to grasp the meaning behind text. Or perhaps syntopically by default if one performs the Zettelkasten method.

      Conventional Syntopical Reading is "immediate" and project-based, at least in Adlerian terms, that is.

      However, when doing Zettelkasten work, one is perpetually reading syntopically and therefore I would call it Delayed Syntopical Reading

    1. Die FPÖ-Politiker Harald Vilimsky und Roman Haider haben dem Chef des Heartland Institutes, James Taylor, den Weg als Lobbyist in das EU Parlament gebahnt. Heartland Institute und FPÖ-Abgeordnete bemühen sich intensiv, mit Desinformation gegen den Green Deal vorzugehen, u.a. duch Beeinflussung ungarischer Abgeordneter. Auch auf der Llimaleugner-Konferenz in Maria Enzersdorf im Juni ist Taylor aufgetreten. Die Heartland-Thesen finden sich im Wahlprogramm der FPÖ. Hintergrundbericht von Benedikt Narodoslawsky. https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000237376/mein-freund-harald-fpoe-ebnete-klimaleugner-lobby-den-weg-ins-eu-parlament

  2. Sep 2024
    1. He gives due honor to Frank & George7 I should like to keep it a few days to read your life. When this monument has been erected to Dr. D you should set about erecting your own in the shape of a really handsome Edition of the Origin that a gentleman could read8 EAD

      Footnote 8:

      The last edition of Origin published during CD’s lifetime was the 1876 reprint of Origin 6th ed., and had some corrections and additions to the text (Freeman 1977). This edition was produced in a cheaper form than previous ones, with small type and a relatively small page; a ‘gentleman’s’ edition usually had larger type and page size, with wider margins.

      Ref: Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11918,” accessed on 30 September 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11918.xml


      ᔥ[[Richard Carter]] in Mastodon at Sep 23, 2024, 08:20 AM (accessed:: 2024-09-30 01:34:36)

  3. Aug 2024
    1. ( ~8:00 )

      This explanation of why to read books in a certain order in dependency of each other is analogous to why a Zettelkasten (in Luhmannian sense) cannot be used collaboratively.

      In order for someone else to understand your notes (not meant to be published), they would have to understand both the source text you are referencing and the implicit references you make. Things you understand instinctively and do not need to write down.

      Because others do not have your experiences and worldview, it is more difficult for them, perhaps impossible, to completely comprehend your Zettels, your notes.

    2. ( ~5:00 ) Reading Aids should be used after initial interpretation. This is to prevent framing bias.

  4. Jul 2024
    1. The song criticizes the tendency to rush to conclusions without fully grasping the complexities of social problems like poverty, inequality, and political corruption. Patience is essential here to delve deeper, research, and understand the root causes rather than relying on superficial opinions.

      First, a man should not have any power over that which he does not understand (deeply).

      Second, patience as a virtue is very important here, because developing expertise in an area takes time and effort. One must be devoted.

      Following from this manner comes, once again, Charlie Munger's principle... Do not form an opinion if you do not understand multiple perspectives.

      "Yes, but I don't have the time to do my own research." is criticism on this principle, I respond with: "But if you aren't even willing to make time to form your opinion based on logic and deep understanding, is it worth having an opinion at all?"

      Like Marcus Aurelius said: "The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."

      You don't ask a lawyer to perform surgery on you, or even to explain it to you theoretically, he does not know anything about this. In the same way, a civilian should not be asked to teach politics.

      From the same manner, do not judge before understanding. This is also what Mortimer J. Adler & Charles van Doren advocate: "You must say with reasonable certainty 'I understand' before you can say any of the following: 'I agree,' 'I disagree,' or 'I suspend judgement.'"

    1. Weller, Charles Edward. The Early History of the Typewriter. Chase & Shepard, printers, 1918. http://archive.org/details/earlyhistorytyp00wellgoog.

    2. The keys beingattached to the type bars and working inunison with the carriage movement enabledus for the first time to test the work ofprinting words and sentences. We werethen in the midst of an exciting politicalcampaign, and it was then for the first timethat the well known sentence was inaugu-rated,—"*Now is the time for all good mento come to the aid of the party;” also theopening sentence of the Declaration of In-dependence, ““When in the course of humanevents,” etc., which sentences were repeat-ed many times in order to test the speed ofthe machine.

      While some sources indicate that "Now is the time..." was used as an early typing exercise, Charles Weller in his book on the history of typewriters indicates it, along with the opening of the Declaration of Independence, was "repeated many times in order to test the speed of the [typewriter] machine.

    3. I have been describing the actions of themachine in some of its worst moods. Butdon’t imagine for a moment that this was acontinuous affair. There were times wheneverything worked beautifully, and _ thespeed that could be gotten out of it at suchtimes was something marvelous, especiallywhen we got onto that familiar centence,“Now is the time for all good men to cometo the aid of the party.”

      More recent typing books use a variant: “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country”. This version fills out a 70-space line if you count the period at the end.

      General lore has it that Charles Weller used the phrase as a typing exercise in the early 1900s.

    1. Type Shop, Ep. 15: The Ultimate Keyring Toolset Guide by [[Typewriter Chicago]]

      Charles Gu's new keyring pliers for about $500 for a set are as good as if not better than vintage tools. In particular the new rubber pieces seem to help protect from breaking the original glass key tops which will then require replacement.

  5. Jun 2024
    1. (~3:00) Syntopical Reading requires building a map of the topic across sources (coming up with one's own terms) in order to find out what each author is saying.

      How does one do this if the process of syntopical reading is the process by which one comes up with the knowledge? I believe the answer lies in a high skill level of Inspectional Reading

      Obviously, one cannot make a perfect map from the get go, and this should not be the intention (defeat perfectionism)... However, a rough sketch or map is far more valuable than none at all.

      I believe this is also the point of Dr. Justin Sung's prestudy... Building the barebone structure of the mindmap, finding the logic behind it all; the first layer.

  6. May 2024
    1. (~6:30)

      I think the major point here is that Adler points out our minds, and thus our thinking, changes over time. Therefore, when a book is read at a later point in time, our notes are different.

      Perhaps his argument to "think again as to make the thought more current" is antithetical to Luhmann's Zettelkasten, which principles upon continuing previous lines of thought, even decades later.

      (future note, about half an hour later)... I think in the Zettelkasten the problem is dealt with adequately, since you actually can make new notes expressing why your thought changes... So in this sense it is even more expanded upon the point that Adler makes even though at first sight it seems the complete opposite.

    2. (~8.55)

      It is argued by Mortimer Adler and Charles van Doren that to fully grasp a book (part of analytical reading), one should make their own analytical table of contents, outlining not just the chapters but also the content. I need to look into how to make those.

    1. Emanuel macron und die französische Regierung setzen zum Ersatz fossiler Energien auf modulare Atomreaktoren eines neuen Typs. Eine Studie ergibt nun, dass unter dem Aspekt unter den Aspekten der Kosten der Risiko und der technologischen ausgereiftheit diese Reaktoren die in sie gesetzten Erwartungen nicht erfüllt werden. Sie seien technisch, weniger ausgereift, teurer und unsichere als großreaktoren und könnten nicht mit einer und Sonnenenergie konkreten. Der Autor der Studie Antoine, hält die SMR für ein Versprechen der Nuklearindustrie, um den scheitern älterer Prognosen über die Vorteile der Atomenergie abzulenken.

      https://www.liberation.fr/economie/nucleaire-un-rapport-torpille-les-minireacteurs-dont-reve-macron-20240319_YMRJIMHJIJG3JM74MDILLW2K5M/

    1. Voyage to Cythera is a part of this collection? Also published in 1857.

    2. Les Fleurs du mal (.mw-parser-output .IPA-label-small{font-size:85%}.mw-parser-output .references .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .infobox .IPA-label-small,.mw-parser-output .navbox .IPA-label-small{font-size:100%}French pronunciation: [le flœʁ dy mal]; English: The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire.
  7. Apr 2024
    1. Most of my notes have a title that roughly conform to Dewey, often with an ersatz Cutter number for the author (that's a library science thing).

      This is the first time I've seen a mention of a Cutter number in the zettelkasten space.

  8. Mar 2024
    1. Evenbefore his betrayal, though, he felt little identification with the colonists,writing that North Carolinians were the most “cowardly Blockheads[another word for lubber] that ever God created & must be used likenegro[e]s if you expect any good of them.”29

      blockheads as a synonym for lubber

      This gives new meaning to the use of "blockhead" in Charles Schultz' Peanuts (usually Lucy in reference to Charlie Brown).

      Recall Samuel Johnson's (1709-1784) aphorism:

      “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”


      Definition from Webster's Dictionary (1913):

      Block"head` (?), n. [Block + head.] A stupid fellow; a dolt; a person deficient in understanding.

      "The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head." —Pope.

  9. Feb 2024
    1. Together, over the years, they achieved what one of their earlymasters, Charles Ammi Cutter, called a “syndetic” structure—that is,a system of referential links—of remarkable coherency andresolution.

      reference for this?


      definition: syndetic structure is one of coherency and resolution made up by referential links.

      Why is no one using this word in the zettelkasten space?


      The adjective "syndetic" means "serving to connect" or "to be connected by a conjunction". (A conjunction being a word used to connect words, phrases and clauses, for example: and, but, if). The antonym is "asyndetic" (connections made without conjoins)

  10. Jan 2024
    1. Top-down approaches work in the opposite direction. Instead of allowing the materials to inform the whole, a perception of what the whole should be determines which materials are allowed to be used. It's "having an overarching concept before working out the details."5

      One of the more notable adopters of this approach to design and architecture was the Bauhaus in the early 20th century. See: Owen, C. (2009). "Bottom-up, Top-down." https://id.iit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bottom-up-top-down-updown09.pdf↩

      It's a question of teleology. Is there a goal or a purpose in mind? (teleology: the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise.)

    1. read [[Dan Allosso]] in Actual Books

      Sometimes a physical copy of a book gives one information not contained in digital scans. Allosso provides the example of Charles Knowlton's book The Fruits of Philosophy which touched on abortion and was published as a tiny hand-held book which would have made it easy to pass from person to person more discretely for its time period.

  11. Nov 2023
    1. Chapter 39 of Zoonomia, “On Generation,” presents Erasmus’ ideas on competition, extinction, and how “different fibrils or molecules are detached from…the parent…to form” the child. The Temple of Nature goes even farther, declaring “all vegetables and animals now existing were originally derived from the smallest microscopic ones, formed by spontaneous vitality” in ancient oceans.

      Interesting to contemplate the evolution of the idea of evolution through the Darwin family.

      Charles would obviously have read his grandfather's book, but it also bears noting that he also had access to his grandfather's commonplace book (and likely his other papers).

      See also: https://hypothes.is/a/FmVxQuqJEey33Uu0UTcMlg

    1. How to Read a Book. Los Angeles: KCET Los Angeles, 1975. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_rizr8bb0c.

      13 part series including:<br /> - 01:33:02 Part 8: How to read Stories - 01:46:13 Part 9: What Makes a Story Good - 01:59:24 Part 10 How to Read a Poem - Shakespeare sonnet 116, "admit" definition - Wordsworth poem about London and nature - 02:12:49 Part 11: Activating Poetry and Plays - 02:26:09 Part 12: How to Read Two Books at the Same Time - 02:39:29 Part 13: The Pyramid of Books

      2023-11-29: Since the original video was removed, one can also view the series at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPajsb520dyzNw9mHsZnrzi5w9N_amS7E

    1. Eco was aware of this predicament. As a university profes-sor, he knew that the majority of students in Italian univer-sities seldom attended classes, that very few of them wouldcontinue to write and do research, and that the degree theyeventually earned would not necessarily improve their socialconditions. It would have been easy to call for the system tobe reformed so as not to require a thesis from students ill-equipped to write one, and for whom the benefit of spendingseveral months working on a thesis might be difficult to jus-tify in cold economic terms.

      Some of the missing piece here is knowing a method for extracting and subsequently building. Without the recipe in hand, it's difficult to bake a complex cake.

      Not mentioned here as something which may be missing, but which Adler & Van Doren identify as strength and ability to read at multiple levels including inspectionally, analytically, and ultimately syntopically.

      To some extent, the knowledge of the method for excerpting and arranging will ultimately allow the interested lifelong learner the ability to read syntopically even if it isn't the sort of targeted exercise it might be within creating a thesis.

  12. Oct 2023
    1. arguments in favor of these ''objective'' tests: They are easy to grade; uniformity and unmistakable answers imply fairness; one can compare performance over time and gauge the results of programs; the validity of questions is statistically tested and the performance of students is followed up through later years.

      Some of the benefits of multiple-choice tests.

      Barzun misses the fact that these are not just easy for teachers to grade, but they're easier for mass grading by machines in a century dominated by standardization of knowledge in a world dominated by standardized mechanization for a mass-production oriented society.

      Cross reference educational reforms of Eliot following the rise of Taylorism.

    1. https://udenver.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcuceuspzkuE9VomnEaGva1HH1ra_iS4Eua?ref=jessestommel.com#/registration

      Some related ideas that are suggesting some sort of thesis for improving the idea of ungrading: - We measure the things we care about. - In Education, we care about learning and understanding, but measuring these outside of testing and evaluation is difficult at best (therefor ungrading). - No one cares about your GPA six months after you graduate. - Somehow we've tied up evaluations and grades into the toxic capitalism and competition within US culture. Some of this is tied into educational movements related to Frederick Winslow Taylor and Harvards Eliot. - Hierarchies instituted by the Great Chain of Being have confounded our educational process.

    1. I'm not so much saying Adler and Van Doren were trying to prevent readers from coming to grips with the unresolved issues of American history illustrated in this example. But I am suggesting that the idea that there's a "message" in these foundational texts and they know what it is and our job is to find out, is flawed. Too deterministic, too hierarchical, too supportive of a master narrative that needs to be challenged so truth can be appreciated in its complexity.

      Amen!

    1. nobody ever said that reading was easy reading is is 02:25:41 very hard if it weren't hard it wouldn't be worth doing correct and the better the work that you're reading the harder the work is and therefore the more satisfying

      Nobody ever said that reading was easy. Reading is very hard. If it weren't hard, it wouldn't be worth doing. And the better the work that you're reading, the harder the work is and therefore the more satisfying. —Charles Van Doren, Part 11: Activating Poetry and Plays

  13. Sep 2023
    1. "verbalism" is the besetting sin of those who fail to read analytically.
    2. Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.
    3. Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book. Revised and Updated edition. 1940. Reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.

      Progress

      • Started reading on 2021-07-28 at 1:26 PM
      • Read through chapter 6 on 2022-11-06 at 1:40 PM

      Annotation URL: urn:x-pdf:47749dd5c860ea4a9b8749ab77a009da<br /> Annotation search

  14. Aug 2023
    1. Der Nähe Osten - der frühere "fruchtbare Halbmond" - ist eines der von der globalen Erhitzung am stärksten betroffenen Gebiete. Ausführliche multimediale Reportage über die Wasserkrise im Irak, die einige früher fruchtbare Gebiete bereits unbewohnbar gemacht hat und den IS-Terrorismus erleichtert. Sie wird verschärft durch Staudämme in der Türkei und im Iran, Raubbau und veraltete Bewässerungstechniken, Regierungsversagen und Bevölkerungswachstum. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/29/world/middleeast/iraq-water-crisis-desertification.html

  15. Jun 2023
    1. Creation, (Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2009) https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/creation-2?vp=lapl

      Torn between faith and science, and suffering hallucinations, English naturalist Charles Darwin struggles to complete 'On the Origin of Species' and maintain his relationship with his wife.

      Director Jon Amiel Featuring: Jennifer Connelly, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones, Paul Bettany, Ian Kelly

    1. Die FDP vertritt bekannte Positionen der Gegner wirksamen Klimaschutzes. Sie sind inspieriert von libertärer Propaganda, wie sie die Koch-Brüder und andere in den USA sehr wirkungsvoll betrieben haben. Besonders der FDP-Politiker Frank Schäffler, der mitentscheidend für die Blockade des deutschen Heizungsgesetzes war, gehört zu einem Netzwerk, das mit den US-Netzwerken zur Verhinderung von Klimaschutz kooperiert und ähnliche Finanziers hat. Christian Stöcker stellt die Hintergründe in diesem Spiegelartikel dar.

      https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/klimaschutz-die-heimlichen-herrscher-der-fpd-kolumne-a-d0defee9-85ea-4cdb-adac-93e49e3539de

  16. May 2023
    1. system was described by Charles Darwin:I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labeled shelves, intowhich I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum. I have bought manybooks and at their ends I make an index of all the facts that concern my work.Before beginning on any subject I look to all the short indexes and make a generaland classified index, and by taking the one or more proper portfolios I have all theinformation collected during my life ready for use.13

      via Nora Barlow ed., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882 vol. 1 (London: Collins, 1958), 137.

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. The Ivy Lee method dates back to 1918, when Lee, a productivity consultant, was hired by Charles M. Schwab, the president of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, to improve his company's efficiency. As the story goes, Lee offered his method to Schwab for free, and after three months, Schwab was so pleased with the results he wrote Lee a check for $25,000 — the equivalent of about $400,000 today.
  17. Apr 2023
  18. Mar 2023
    1. Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens. (Sektion 1.2 Die Kartei) Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.

      annotation target: urn:x-pdf:00126394ba28043d68444144cd504562

      (Unknown translation from German into English. v1 TK)

      The overall title of the work (in English: Technique of Scientific Work) calls immediately to mind the tradition of note taking growing out of the scientific historical methods work of Bernheim and Langlois/Seignobos and even more specifically the description of note taking by Beatrice Webb (1926) who explicitly used the phrase "recipe for scientific note-taking".

      see: https://hypothes.is/a/BFWG2Ae1Ee2W1HM7oNTlYg

      first reading: 2022-08-23 second reading: 2022-09-22

      I suspect that this translation may be from Clemens in German to Scheper and thus potentially from the 1951 edition?

      Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens; eine Anleitung, besonders für Studierende. 8., Umgearb. Aufl. 1931. Reprint, Berlin: R. Kiepert, 1951.

    1. his original French

      Rentre à la maison, Darwin me fit voir sa bibliothèque, grande pièce du rez-de-chaussée, très commode pour un homme studieux: beaucoup de livres sur les rayons; du jour de deux côtes; une table pour écrire et une autre pour les appareils destinés aux expériences. Celui sur la direction des racines était encore en action. Darwin me donna une idée de son avant-dernier ouvrage, qui était alors sous presse. Il est seul l'obligeance de m'apprendre que pour ses notes il avait employé, de lui-même, précisément le procède des fragments détachés que mon père et moi avons suivi et dont j'ai parlé en détail dans ma Phylographie. Quatre-vingts ans de noire expérience m'avaient montré sa valeur. J'en suis plus pénétré que jamais, puisque Darwin l'avait imaginé de son côté. Cette méthode donne aux travaux plus d'exactitude, supplée à la mémoire et gagne des années.

      http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=1&itemID=CUL-DAR134.11&viewtype=text

  19. Feb 2023
    1. Whewell was one of the Cambridge dons whom Charles Darwin met during his education there, and when Darwin returned from the Beagle voyage he was directly influenced by Whewell, who persuaded Darwin to become secretary of the Geological Society of London. The title pages of On the Origin of Species open with a quotation from Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise about science founded on a natural theology of a creator establishing laws:[33] But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws.
  20. Jan 2023
    1. a couple of years later, I decided to sign up for cosmonaut training in Russia as a backup to Charles Simonyi, the creator of Microsoft Word and also, as it happens, a trustee of the Institute since 1997 (and now Chairman). I told my parents about it over dinner in a restaurant in New York.

      @gyuri !- Interesting connection : Charles Simonyi and Freeman Dyson

    1. Like many people, I’d always been baffled by the occasional, undeniably ‘Lamarckian’ passages in On the Origin of Species, bearing in mind Darwin is generally credited with having discredited such thinking.

      Despite Darwin being thought of as having discredited Lamarckian inheritance, there are Lamarckian passages in portions of his work.

    1. An alternative school of Darwinism emerged in Russia emphasizing cooperation, not competition, as the driver of evolutionary change. In 1902 this approach found a voice in a popular book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, by naturalist and revolutionary anarchist pamphleteer Peter Kropotkin.

      Was this referenced in the Selfish Gene?

      Things working at the level of the gene vs. species...

    2. Spencer, in turn, was struck by how much the forces driving natural selection in On the Origin of Species jibed with his own laissez-faire economic theories. Competition over resources, rational calculation of advantage, and the gradual extinction of the weak were taken to be the prime directives of the universe.
  21. Dec 2022
    1. Perrow argued that “normal accidents” were nearly inevitable in a complex, tightly coupled system. To resist such an outcome, systems designers needed to have backups and redundancy, safety checks and maintenance.
    2. One interesting concept in organizational sociology is “normal accidents theory.” Studying Three Mile Island, Charles Perrow created a 2x2 grid
  22. Nov 2022
    1. https://medium.com/@ben_fry/tracing-the-origin-65011dc20877

      Could be interesting to apply this sort of process to a variety of texts over time. A draft of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein comes to mind.


      How to view this through the lens of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions? particularly as this was the evolution of an idea by the same author over time...

    2. The only diagram or image in The Origin of Species, a tree depicting divergence (source)

      Darwin's On the Origin of Species only contains one diagram, a branching tree diagram which shows divergence of species.

    3. he was working on the same theme with Stefanie Posavec. They completed their piece some time later, depicting the changes as lovely branching trees — a kind of homage to Darwin’s lone diagram in the book.

      Greg McInerny of Microsoft Research and Stefanie Posavek created a version of Darwin's On the Origin of Species that displayed variations between the editions as a branching tree diagram, a nod to the only diagram which appeared in Darwin's original work. .

    4. Fifty years ago, coinciding with the centennial of the release of Darwin’s manuscript, author Morse Peckham collected all six editions into a single “variorum” text. Peckham painstakingly created a reference system that denotes the modifications and changes between editions. The text was created by Peckham’s careful enumeration of every sentence from every edition, copied onto index cards; from these cards, he carefully assembled them into a final text.
    1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Johnson_(historian)

      Charles Johnson wrote a manual with some general advice about zettelkasten, note taking, and indexing:<br /> The Mechanical Processes of the Historian, Helps for Students of History (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1922)

    1. This is a doctrine so practically important that we could have wismore than two pages of the book had been devoted to note-takiand other aspects of the " Plan and Arrangement of CollectionsContrariw

      In the 1923 short notices section of the journal History, one of the editors remarked in a short review of "The Mechanical Processes of the Historian" that they wished that Charles Johnson had spent more than two pages of the book on note taking and "other aspects of the 'Plan and Arrangement of Collections'" as the zettelkasten "is a doctrine so practically important" to historians.

    2. T., T. F., A. F. P., E. R. A., H. E. E., R. C., E. L. W., F. J. C. H., and E. J. C. “Short Notices.” History 8, no. 31 (1923): 231–37.

    1. <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>atomicnotes </span> in Death by Zettelkasten: a haunting story of information overload! : Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>11/01/2022 12:03:47</time>)</cite></small>

      T., T. F., A. F. P., E. R. A., H. E. E., R. C., E. L. W., F. J. C. H., and E. J. C. “Short Notices.” History 8, no. 31 (1923): 231–37.

  23. Oct 2022
    1. Thus Paxson was not content to limit historians to the immediateand the ascertainable. Historical truth must appear through some-thing short of scientific method, and in something other than scien-tific form, linked and geared to the unassimilable mass of facts.There was no standard technique suited to all persons and purposes,in note-taking or in composition. "The ordinary methods of his-torical narrative are ineffective before a theme that is in its essen-tials descriptive," he wrote of Archer B. Hulbert's Forty- Niners(1931) in 1932. "In some respects the story of the trails can notbe told until it is thrown into the form of epic poetry, or comes un-der the hand of the historical novelist." 42

      This statement makes it appear as if Paxson was aware of the movement in the late 1800s of the attempt to make history a more scientific endeavor by writers like Bernheim, Langlois/Seignobos, and others, but that Pomeroy is less so.

      How scientific can history be as an area of study? There is the descriptive from which we might draw conclusions, but how much can we know when there are not only so many potential variables, but we generally lack the ability to design and run discrete experiments on history itself?

      Recall Paxson's earlier comment that "in history you cannot prove an inference". https://hypothes.is/a/LIWSoFlLEe2zUtvMoEr0nQ

      Had enough time elapsed up to this writing in 1953, that the ideal of a scientific history from the late 1800s had been borne out not to be accomplished?

    2. He was impressed by the difference between written history and(though he did not use the phrase) what Charles A. Beard called"history as actuality"
    1. The awful warning is Lord Acton, whose enormous learning never resulted in the great work the world expected of him. An unforgettable description of Acton’s Shropshire study after his death in 1902 was given by Sir Charles Oman. There were shelves and shelves of books, many of them with pencilled notes in the margin. ‘There were pigeonholed desks and cabinets with literally thousands of compartments into each of which were sorted little white slips with references to some particular topic, so drawn up (so far as I could see) that no one but the compiler could easily make out the drift.’ And there were piles of unopened parcels of books, which kept arriving, even after his death. ‘For years apparently he had been endeavouring to keep up with everything that had been written, and to work their results into his vast thesis.’ ‘I never saw a sight,’ Oman writes, ‘that more impressed on me the vanity of human life and learning.’

      Lord Acton read widely and collected notes which he kept in pigeonholed desks and cabinets with thousands of compartments. Sadly he died in 1902 without having written anything using them, and being only made sense of by the compiler were broadly useless.

    2. If a passage is interesting from several different points of view, then it should be copied out several times on different slips.

      I don't recall Langlois and Seignobos suggesting copying things several times over. Double check this point, particularly with respect to the transference to Luhmann.

    1. Deutsch wrote often of history’s ‘scientific’ nature and inductive approach, leading toan almost positivistic method. ‘From individual facts’, he wrote, ‘one ascends to prin-ciples’, continuing: ‘Facts have to be arranged in a systematic manner . . . First we mustknow, and afterward we may reason’. This ‘systematic’ arrangement, he believed, sepa-rated the historian from the mere annalist or chronicler (Deutsch, 1900b: 166).

      This scientific viewpoint of history was not unique to the time and can be seen ensconced in popular books on historical method of the time, including Bernheim and Langlois/Seignobos.

    1. Adams H. B. (1886) Methods of Historical Study. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

      Where does this fit with respect to the zettelkasten tradition and Bernheim, Langlois/Seignobos?

    2. It may seem a curious relic of positivistic history, but closer examination allows us to interrogate the materiality of scholarly labor.

      Given the time period (1859-1921), what was the potential influence, if any, on Deutsch and his methods by historical methods writers and the evolution of the science of history by Ernst Bernheim or Seignobos/Langlois from that same period?

    1. In "On Intellectual Craftsmanship" (1952), C. Wright Mills talks about his methods for note taking, thinking, and analysis in what he calls "sociological imagination". This is a sociologists' framing of their own research and analysis practice and thus bears a sociological related name. While he talks more about the thinking, outlining, and writing process rather than the mechanical portion of how he takes notes or what he uses, he's extending significantly on the ideas and methods that Sönke Ahrens describes in How to Take Smart Notes (2017), though obviously he's doing it 65 years earlier. It would seem obvious that the specific methods (using either files, note cards, notebooks, etc.) were a bit more commonplace for his time and context, so he spent more of his time on the finer and tougher portions of the note making and thinking processes which are often the more difficult parts once one is past the "easy" mechanics.

      While Mills doesn't delineate the steps or materials of his method of note taking the way Beatrice Webb, Langlois & Seignobos, Johannes Erich Heyde, Antonin Sertillanges, or many others have done before or Umberto Eco, Robert Greene/Ryan Holiday, Sönke Ahrens, or Dan Allosso since, he does focus more on the softer portions of his thinking methods and their desired outcomes and provides personal examples of how it works and what his expected outcomes are. Much like Niklas Luhmann describes in Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen (VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1981), Mills is focusing on the thinking processes and outcomes, but in a more accessible way and with some additional depth.

      Because the paper is rather short, but specific in its ideas and methods, those who finish the broad strokes of Ahrens' book and methods and find themselves somewhat confused will more than profit from the discussion here in Mills. Those looking for a stronger "crash course" might find that the first seven chapters of Allosso along with this discussion in Mills is a straighter and shorter path.

      While Mills doesn't delineate his specific method in terms of physical tools, he does broadly refer to "files" which can be thought of as a zettelkasten (slip box) or card index traditions. Scant evidence in the piece indicates that he's talking about physical file folders and sheets of paper rather than slips or index cards, but this is generally irrelevant to the broader process of thinking or writing. Once can easily replace the instances of the English word "file" with the German concept of zettelkasten and not be confused.

      One will note that this paper was written as a manuscript in April 1952 and was later distributed for classroom use in 1955, meaning that some of these methods were being distributed from professor to students. The piece was later revised and included as an appendix to Mill's text The Sociological Imagination which was first published in 1959.

      Because there aren't specifics about Mills' note structure indicated here, we can't determine if his system was like that of Niklas Luhmann, but given the historical record one could suppose that it was closer to the commonplace tradition using slips or sheets. One thing becomes more clear however that between the popularity of Webb's work and this (which was reprinted in 2000 with a 40th anniversary edition), these methods were widespread in the mid-twentieth century and specifically in the field of sociology.

      Above and beyond most of these sorts of treatises on note taking method, Mills does spend more time on the thinking portions of the practice and delineates eleven different practices that one can focus on as they actively read/think and take notes as well as afterwards for creating content or writing.


      My full notes on the article can be found at https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&addQuoteContext=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A0138200b4bfcde2757a137d61cd65cb8

  24. Sep 2022
    1. they suggest that the use of symbols to model the world developed rapidly between about 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, and has the effect of giving emphasis to analytic thought as the dominant mode of human consciousness. Rather than seeing symbols as the impetus for human logic, they argue for presymbolic elements of logic in Peirce’s sign categories shared widely by humans and other animals.

      !- explanation : language - instead of arguing for the power of symbols, they argue for the power of presymbolic elements of logic as per Charles Saunder Peirce's sign categories

    1. Our difficult journey ends in acceptance. Not an acceptance of hope-lessness but an acceptance that our familiar nationcentric way of thinking nolonger serves us and we can let it go. Acceptance, then, is not a capitulationbut a new liberation: we learn to see ourselves and the world with freshworldcentric eyes.

      !- similiar to : Ascent of Humanity - Birthing process - Birth to a new worldview - Cannot stay where we are or risk being stillborn - must go through the dangerous journey of birth - what once nurtured us can now destroy us if we stay

    2. The problem is that adopting new thinking means first loosening andletting go of our existing way, and this involves a terrifying transition.Rather like the mythological bird the phoenix that first had to die andturn to ashes before being reborn, new life can only arise when somethinghas been let go. We have to go through a grieving process for what we arelosing, similar to the one we might experience if someone close to us dies.It can be thought of as a difficult journey – painful but necessary

      !- similiar to : Charles Eisenstein - Ascent of Humanity has same theme - http://ascentofhumanity.com/text/

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    Annotators

    1. In his view, to know nothing about an important subject is to invite problems. Both Munger and Buffett set aside plenty of time each day to just think. Anyone reading the news is provided with constant reminders of the consequences of not thinking. Thinking is a surprisingly underrated activity.

      Es verdad que tiene bastante mala prensa pensar. Por ejemplo: falta de acción, pasivo. poco práctico. aislado de los verdaderos problemas, etc..

    2. You’ve got a complex system and it spews out a lot of wonderful numbers that enable you to measure some factors. But there are other factors that are terribly important, [yet] there’s no precise numbering you can put to these factors. You know they’re important, but you don’t have the numbers. Well, practically (1) everybody overweighs the stuff that can be numbered, because it yields to the statistical techniques they’re taught in academia, and (2) doesn’t mix in the hard-to-measure stuff that may be more important. That is a mistake I’ve tried all my life to avoid, and I have no regrets for having done that.

      -- Charles Munger

      El drama de los ingenieros.

    1. Unfortunately, many graduate and professional students rely onreading strategies taught in high school or college for their academicwork. One example is taking notes only during lectures andhighlighting passages of academic texts

      It seems broadly true in the new millennium and potentially much earlier that students are not taught broader reading strategies within academic settings. The history of note taking strategies and teaching would indicate that this wasn't always true.

      In prior centuries there was more focus in earlier education on grounding in the trivium and quadrivium including rhetoric. These pieces and their fundamentals are now either glossed over or skipped altogether to focus more training on what might be considered more difficult and more important material. It would seem that educational reforms from the late 1500s shifted the focus on some of these prior norms to focus on other materials, and in particular reforms in the early 1900s (Charles William Eliot , et al) which focused on training a workforce for a more industrialized and capitalistic society weaned many of these methods out of earlier curricula. This results in students dramatically under-prepared for doctoral research, analysis, and writing.

    1. The idea that analysis must precede synthesis is old, of course. Galileo Galilei and René Descartes already thought it was necessary to distinguish between an analytic and a synthetic step in dealing with any problem.

      Langlois/Seignobos talk about this in their text Introduction aux études historiques (1879) as well, focusing especially on the analysis portion to have a solid base of historical information from which to build and create a synthesis.

  25. Aug 2022
    1. By the earlytwentieth century advice manuals on research methods recommended takingnotes on index cards.141

      Here Blair quotes Chavigny and Heyde, but crucially leaves out Bernheim, Langlois & Seignobos, and Beatrice Webb.

      Check the others, specifically for index card references, but Webb uses slips or sheets (and often larger ones).

    1. James 11.Hanford, Malcolm McLeod, and E d g a r C. Knowlton, TheNelaon handbook of English, New York, 1931.

      I can't help but wonder about a possible familial connection between Edgard C. Knowlton (1921 - 2016) and Charles Knowlton (1800 - 1850). Grandson perhaps?

      http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n85319810/

      cc: @danallosso

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  26. www.janeausten.pludhlab.org www.janeausten.pludhlab.org
    1. every man to have the same objects and pleasures as myself

      Hmm except he's dissing Charles Hayter for being "too cool about sporting"

    2. honour

      The formality of Elizabeth vs Anne walking with Charles and Mary to visit the Musgrove party.

    3. special recommendation

      Charles is talking about shooting and getting approval from one of the three landed gentry to shoot on their land, because shooting is all important to Charles

    4. by way of doing something, as shooting was over, Charles had proposed coming with him

      poor Charles really needs entertainment - he and Mary are similar in that way

    1. Historical Hypermedia: An Alternative History of the Semantic Web and Web 2.0 and Implications for e-Research. .mp3. Berkeley School of Information Regents’ Lecture. UC Berkeley School of Information, 2010. https://archive.org/details/podcast_uc-berkeley-school-informat_historical-hypermedia-an-alte_1000088371512. archive.org.

      https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/events/2010/historical-hypermedia-alternative-history-semantic-web-and-web-20-and-implications-e.

      https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/audio/2010-10-20-vandenheuvel_0.mp3

      headshot of Charles van den Heuvel

      Interface as Thing - book on Paul Otlet (not released, though he said he was working on it)

      • W. Boyd Rayward 1994 expert on Otlet
      • Otlet on annotation, visualization, of text
      • TBL married internet and hypertext (ideas have sex)
      • V. Bush As We May Think - crosslinks between microfilms, not in a computer context
      • Ted Nelson 1965, hypermedia

      t=540

      • Michael Buckland book about machine developed by Emanuel Goldberg antecedent to memex
      • Emanuel Goldberg and His Knowledge Machine: Information, Invention, and Political Forces (New Directions in Information Management) by Michael Buckland (Libraries Unlimited, (March 31, 2006)
      • Otlet and Goldsmith were precursors as well

      four figures in his research: - Patrick Gattis - biologist, architect, diagrams of knowledge, metaphorical use of architecture; classification - Paul Otlet, Brussels born - Wilhelm Ostwalt - nobel prize in chemistry - Otto Neurath, philosophher, designer of isotype

      Paul Otlet

      Otlet was interested in both the physical as well as the intangible aspects of the Mundaneum including as an idea, an institution, method, body of work, building, and as a network.<br /> (#t=1020)

      Early iPhone diagram?!?

      (roughly) armchair to do the things in the web of life (Nelson quote) (get full quote and source for use) (circa 19:30)

      compares Otlet to TBL


      Michael Buckland 1991 <s>internet of things</s> coinage - did I hear this correctly? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things lists different coinages

      Turns out it was "information as thing"<br /> See: https://hypothes.is/a/kXIjaBaOEe2MEi8Fav6QsA


      sugane brierre and otlet<br /> "everything can be in a document"<br /> importance of evidence


      The idea of evidence implies a passiveness. For evidence to be useful then, one has to actively do something with it, use it for comparison or analysis with other facts, knowledge, or evidence for it to become useful.


      transformation of sound into writing<br /> movement of pieces at will to create a new combination of facts - combinatorial creativity idea here. (circa 27:30 and again at 29:00)<br /> not just efficiency but improvement and purification of humanity

      put things on system cards and put them into new orders<br /> breaking things down into smaller pieces, whether books or index cards....

      Otlet doesn't use the word interfaces, but makes these with language and annotations that existed at the time. (32:00)

      Otlet created diagrams and images to expand his ideas

      Otlet used octagonal index cards to create extra edges to connect them together by topic. This created more complex trees of knowledge beyond the four sides of standard index cards. (diagram referenced, but not contained in the lecture)

      Otlet is interested in the "materialization of knowledge": how to transfer idea into an object. (How does this related to mnemonic devices for daily use? How does it relate to broader material culture?)

      Otlet inspired by work of Herbert Spencer

      space an time are forms of thought, I hold myself that they are forms of things. (get full quote and source) from spencer influence of Plato's forms here?

      Otlet visualization of information (38:20)

      S. R. Ranganathan may have had these ideas about visualization too

      atomization of knowledge; atomist approach 19th century examples:S. R. Ranganathan, Wilson, Otlet, Richardson, (atomic notes are NOT new either...) (39:40)

      Otlet creates interfaces to the world - time with cyclic representation - space - moving cube along time and space axes as well as levels of detail - comparison to Ted Nelson and zoomable screens even though Ted Nelson didn't have screens, but simulated them in paper - globes

      Katie Berner - semantic web; claims that reporting a scholarly result won't be a paper, but a nugget of information that links to other portions of the network of knowledge.<br /> (so not just one's own system, but the global commons system)

      Mention of Open Annotation (Consortium) Collaboration:<br /> - Jane Hunter, University of Australia Brisbane & Queensland<br /> - Tim Cole, University of Urbana Champaign<br /> - Herbert Van de Sompel, Los Alamos National Laboratory annotations of various media<br /> see:<br /> - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311366469_The_Open_Annotation_Collaboration_A_Data_Model_to_Support_Sharing_and_Interoperability_of_Scholarly_Annotations - http://www.openannotation.org/spec/core/20130205/index.html - http://www.openannotation.org/PhaseIII_Team.html

      trust must be put into the system for it to work

      coloration of the provenance of links goes back to Otlet (~52:00)

      Creativity is the friction of the attention space at the moments when the structural blocks are grinding against one another the hardest. —Randall Collins (1998) The sociology of philosophers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (p.76)

  27. www.janeausten.pludhlab.org www.janeausten.pludhlab.org
    1. He is just Lady Russell’s sort. Give him a book, and he will read all day long

      Perhaps Charles is one of the family members who believes Lady Russell persuaded Anne to refuse him because he wasn't bookish enough

  28. www.janeausten.pludhlab.org www.janeausten.pludhlab.org
    1. all the children, and seen the very last

      It's never clear how many children the Musgroves have. Charles, Louisa and Henrietta are the only "grown up"

  29. www.janeausten.pludhlab.org www.janeausten.pludhlab.org
    1. Charles

      Charles is obviously a family name (Charles Musgrove, Mary's husband; Charles Musgrove, Mary's son; Charles Hayter and one can presume Charles Musgrove senior, Mary's father in law). Names were often reused - Austen makes fun of it in the first chapter "all the Marys and Elizabeths".

  30. www.janeausten.pludhlab.org www.janeausten.pludhlab.org
    1. brother’s

      Brother-in-law, this usage is normal for the time period. I think she really does view Charles as a brother though

  31. www.janeausten.pludhlab.org www.janeausten.pludhlab.org
    1. he dropped the arms of both to hunt after a weasel which he had a momentary glance of, and they could hardly get him along at all.

      Re-reading the novel after viewing Persuasion (2022), I was partly focused on finding the kind of comedy that Cracknell's adaptation foregrounds, which verges on slapstick at different moments, especially when Anne is involved. Anne's humor in the novel remains in the familiar realm of the satirical. But this scene with Charles Musgrove, Mary, and Anne is one of the few moments where it's possible to see some silliness in the narrative. The image of Charles chasing after this small animal to disengage himself from Mary's complaints is charming and makes him look quite silly: he is disarmed by her tenacious complaining and rather than endure them prefers to run after a small animal. The humor is turned against the couple, not at all an exemplar of marital respect. These two spouses might be found bickering but they are also conflict-averse, unable to enter into honest dialogue. The movie is inclined to giving Mary the upper hand. In the novel, Charles' possibly threatening masculinity is suggested through his persona as an avid sportsman. Hunting for weasels was not silly in and of itself at the time. These small and slender creatures had (and still do) a reputation for being ferocious predators. Thomas Bewick, who Austen would have known, describes them as follows in his A General History of Quadrupeds (1790): "The Weasel is very common, and well known in most parts of this country; is very destructive to young birds, poultry, rabbits, &c.; and is a keen devourer of eggs, which it sucks with great avidity" (219).

  32. www.janeausten.pludhlab.org www.janeausten.pludhlab.org
    1. knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle

      This feels sad - Anne is considered nothing in her own circle, although there are different concerns at Uppercross I do believe the Musgroves really accept her. They are lovely people and I think had Anne married Charles she would have been happy in their family life

  33. Jul 2022
    1. Langlois, Charles-Victor / Seignobos, Charles (1898): Introduction to the Study of History. London

      Niklas Luhmann cites Langlois and Seignobos' Introduction to the Study of History (1898) at least once, so there's evidence that he read at least a portion of the book which outlines some portions of note taking practice that resemble portions of his zettelkasten method.

    1. New DNA technology is shaking up the family trees of many plants and animals.

      One of Darwin's most compelling arguments in favour of evolution by means of natural selection was just how many different, apparently unrelated phenomena it explained. One of these was 'Classification' (what we now call taxonomy).

      Darwin argued that, when the taxonomists of his day arranged species into hierarchical groups, those tree-like groupings were best explained by genealogical descent.

      Now that biological evolution is accepted as a fact, genealogical descent has become the criterion taxonomists use to place species into hierarchical groups. Ironically, Darwin's explanation of taxonomy means it can no longer be used to justify his theory because modern taxonomy is, in effect, defined by his theory.

      The strongest tool we have for identifying genealogical descent in species is modern DNA analysis. This has helped identify many mistakes in former, non-DNA-based taxonomic classifications. But DNA analysis can't be used in all cases… For example, we do not have access to DNA samples of the vast majority of extinct species.

    1. “ Every one agrees nowadays ”, observethe most noted French writers on the study of history, “ that it is advisable to collectmaterials on separate cards or slips of paper. . . . The advantages of this artifice areobvious; the detachability of the slips enables us to group them at will in a host ofdifferent combinations; if necessary, to change their places; it is easy to bring textsof the same kind together, and to incorporate additions, as they are acquired, in theinterior of the groups to which they belong ” (Introduction to the Study of History,by Charles Langlois and Charles Seignobos, translated by C. G. Berry, 1898, p.103). “
    1. Peirce, Charles Sanders. “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” Popular Science Monthly 12, no. Jan. (January 1878): 286–302.

      see also: - https://cspeirce.omeka.net/items/show/3

    2. It is terrible to seehow a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man's head, willsometimes act like an obstruction of inert matter in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain,and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst ofintellectual plenty.
    1. Beatrice Webb, the famous sociologist and political activist, reported in 1926: "'Every one agrees nowadays', observe the most noted French writers on the study of history, 'that it is advisable to collect materials on separate cards or slips of paper. . . . The advantages of this artifice are obvious; the detachability of the slips enables us to group them at will in a host of different combinations; if necessary, to change their places; it is easy to bring texts of the same kind together, and to incorporate additions, as they are acquired, in the interior of the groups to which they belong.'" [6]

      footnote:

      Webb 1926, p. 363. The number of scholars who have used the index card method is legion, especially in sociology and anthropology, but also in many other subjects. Claude Lévy-Strauss learned their use from Marcel Mauss and others, Roland Barthes used them, Charles Sanders Peirce relied on them, and William Van Orman Quine wrote his lectures on them, etc.

    1. In computer programming, Intentional Programming is a programming paradigm developed by Charles Simonyi that encodes in software source code the precise intention which programmers (or users) have in mind when conceiving their work. By using the appropriate level of abstraction at which the programmer is thinking, creating and maintaining computer programs become easier. By separating the concerns for intentions and how they are being operated upon, the software becomes more modular and allows for more reusable software code

      Definition of Intentional Programming * In computer programming, * Intentional Programming is a programming paradigm * developed by Charles Simonyi * that encodes in software source code the precise intention which programmers (or users) have in mind when conceiving their work. * By using the appropriate level of abstraction at which the programmer is thinking, * creating and maintaining computer programs become easier. * By separating the concerns for intentions and how they are being operated upon, * the software becomes more modular and allows for more reusable software code. * Can we see an example of this in action for clarification?

  34. bafybeibbaxootewsjtggkv7vpuu5yluatzsk6l7x5yzmko6rivxzh6qna4.ipfs.dweb.link bafybeibbaxootewsjtggkv7vpuu5yluatzsk6l7x5yzmko6rivxzh6qna4.ipfs.dweb.link
    1. Possibly the most useful paradigm to understand individual drive is the psychological concept offlow, which was derived from numerous observations of how people feel while performing differenttypes of activity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). “Flow” refers tothe pleasurable state experienced when the activity, while intensely focused, proceeds in aseemingly effortless, flowing manner—because every action immediately elicits the next action,without any hesitation, worry or self-consciousness. In such a state, continuing the activity becomesthe only real concern, while everything else is pushed to the back of the mind. That is exactly thekind of focus and commitment that we expect from a good mobilization system. The gratifying,addictive quality of computer games is commonly explained by their capacity to produce flow(Cowley, Charles, Black, & Hickey, 2008).The basic conditions needed to generate flow are:• the activity has clear goals;• every action produces an immediate feedback.• the degree of difficulty or challenge of the task remains in balance with the level of skill

      Helping individuals achieve the feeling of flow is a prime motivator.

      Definition: Flow is the pleasurable state experienced when the activity, while intensely focused, proceeds in a seemingly effortless, flowing manner—because every action immediately elicits the next action, without any hesitation, worry or self-consciousness.

      Three conditions to achieve flow state: 1. have clear goals; 2. every action produces an immediate feedback. 3. the degree of difficulty or challenge of the task remains in balance with the level of skill

    1. The lesson of fallen societies is that civilization is a vulnerable organism, especially when it seems almighty. We are the world’s top predator, and predators crash suddenly when they outgrow their prey. If the resulting chaos unleashes nuclear war, it could bring mass extinction in a heartbeat, with Homo sapiens among the noted dead.

      The maladaptive cultural evolution of our species has led us to the height of human technological and economic prowess as well as the height of ecological disaster. This can be interpreted as the result of linear vs nonlinear thinking, simplistic modeling vs complex modeling and reductionistic approach vs a systems approach. An attitude of separation engenders a controlling attitude of nature based on hubris, instead of humbling ourselves at the vast ignorance each of us and also collectively we have about nature. Design based on a consistent attitude of willful ignorance is sure to fail. Then Ascent of Humanity will lead to a trajectory of its own downfall as long as that ascent depends on the cannibalization of its own life support system based on ignorance of our deep entanglement with nature. http://ascentofhumanity.com/text/

  35. Jun 2022
    1. There's no inherent meaning in information. It's what we do with that information that matters.

      This is a profound statement that needs to be fully explored. This touches upon the theory of Charles Saunders Peirce and his Semiotics, as well as Jakob Von Uexkull and his Umwelt theory. Information becomes meaningful within an evolutionary framing of fitness.

    1. https://www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk/the-scope-and-nature-of-darwins-commonplace-book/

      Erasmus Darwin's commonplace book

      It is one of the version(s?) published by John Bell based on John Locke's method and is a quarto volume bound in vellum with about 300 sheets of fine paper.

      Blank pages 1 to 160 were numbered and filled by Darwin in his own hand with 136 entries. The book was started in 1776 and continued until 1787. Presumably Darwin had a previous commonplace book, but it has not been found and this version doesn't have any experiments prior to 1776, though there are indications that some material has been transferred from another source.

      The book contains material on medical records, scientific matters, mechanical and industrial improvements, and inventions.

      The provenance of Erasmus Darwin's seems to have it pass through is widow Elizabeth who added some family history to it. It passed through to her son and other descendants who added entries primarily of family related topics. Leonard Darwin (1850-1943), the last surviving son of Charles Darwin gave it to Down House, Kent from whence it was loaned to Erasmus Darwin House in 1999.

  36. May 2022
    1. "The Finished Mystery," by Clayton J. Woodworth and George Fisher (1917). This was published as Volume 7 of Studies in the Scriptures and advertised as the posthumous work of Charles Taze Russell. This is a text version of the first printing and also contains pictures that were circulated in the Karatol edition. Later printings contain significant changes. Publication of this book was authorized by J.F. Rutherford, president of the Watchtower Society. Rutherford later gave the group the name Jehovah's Witnesses in 1931.

      Randomly came across this today. Who knew?

  37. Apr 2022
    1. n 1671, Charles Sorel rec-ommended taking notes in notebooks for books one did not own and markingbooks one owned without transcribing from them, which eliminated the irksomeinterruptions to reading caused by copying excerpts.
    2. One such manual was De la connaissance desbons livres (On the Knowledge of Good Books) by Charles Sorel (ca. 1602–74)
  38. Mar 2022
    1. L’autisme est un trouble neuro-développemental caractérisé par des anomalies dans l’interaction sociale, dans la communication et dans le comportement (activités répétitives et stéréotypées). Ces anomalies causent, pour la personne atteinte d’autisme, de grandes difficultés cognitives : d’attention, d’apprentissage, de mémorisation et  de décodification de l’information.

      L’autisme est un trouble neuro-développemental caractérisé par des anomalies ==>problème de définition du champ dans l’interaction sociale, dans la communication et dans le comportement (activités répétitives et stéréotypées). Ces anomalies causent, pour la personne atteinte d’autisme, de grandes difficultés cognitives ==>elles ne sont pas conséquence des interactions sociales ni des stéréotypies mais liées au développent du cerveau

      Qu’est-ce que le trouble du spectre de l’autisme : Jadhav, M., & Schaepper, M. A. (2021, août). What is Autism Spectrum Disorder? American Psychiatric Association. Consulté le 11 mars 2022, à l’adresse https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/autism/what-is-autism-spectrum-disorderDiagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorders : signs and symptoms on Social communication & Restricted interests and repetitive behaviors

  39. Feb 2022
    1. “I had [...]during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever apublished fact, a new observation or thought came across me, whichwas opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of itwithout fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such factsand thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory thanfavorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raisedagainst my views, which I had not at least noticed and attempted toanswer.” (Darwin 1958, 123)

      Charles Darwin fought confirmation bias by writing down contrary arguments and criticisms and addressing them.

  40. Jan 2022
    1. The mansion sits on the same land where Sharon Tate and four others were murdered by the Manson family in the summer of 1969.Back then, the property’s address was 10050 Cielo Dr., but in 1994, real estate investor Alvin Weintraub demolished the house and changed the address to 10066 Cielo Dr. in an attempt to separate the estate from its dark past.
    1. Charles Darwin wrote an entire book about humans being social creatures. He wrote that any Hobbesian human would be an “unnatural monster.”

      Relate this back to Graeber/Wengrow's thesis.

  41. Dec 2021
    1. Hobbes and Rousseau told their contemporaries things that werestartling, profound and opened new doors of the imagination. Nowtheir ideas are just tired common sense. There’s nothing in them thatjustifies the continued simplification of human affairs. If socialscientists today continue to reduce past generations to simplistic,two-dimensional caricatures, it is not so much to show us anythingoriginal, but just because they feel that’s what social scientists areexpected to do so as to appear ‘scientific’. The actual result is toimpoverish history – and as a consequence, to impoverish our senseof possibility.

      The simplification required to make models and study systems can be a useful tool, but one constantly needs to go back to the actual system to make sure that future predictions and work actually fit the real world system.

      Too often social theorists make assumptions which aren't supported in real life and this can be a painfully dangerous practice, especially when those assumptions are built upon in ways that put those theories out on a proverbial creaking limb.


      This idea is related to the bias that Charles Mathewes points out about how we treat writers as still living or as if they never lived. see: https://hypothes.is/a/VTU2lFvZEeyiJ2tN76i4sA

    2. Most of the people we will beconsidering in this book are long since dead. It is no longer possibleto have any sort of conversation with them. We are nonethelessdetermined to write prehistory as if it consisted of people one wouldhave been able to talk to, when they were still alive – who don’t just

      exist as paragons, specimens, sock-puppets or playthings of some inexorable law of history.

      This is similar to a problem that Charles Mathewes has pointed out about history and historical writing: Too often we act as if the writer never died and also we forget that the writer ever lived in the real world.

      Peoples' context matters.

      Cross reference: Lecture 1 of [[[The City of God (Books that Matter)]]

    1. It’s not an accident or a misfortune that great-books pedagogy is an antibody in the “knowledge factory” of the research university, in other words. It was intended as an antibody. The disciplinary structure of the modern university came first; the great-books courses came after.

      It seems at odds to use Charles W. Eliot as an example here as his writings described by Cathy Davidson in The New Education indicates that Eliot was specifically attempting to create standards in education that are counter to Menand's argument here.

    2. The idea of the great books emerged at the same time as the modern university. It was promoted by works like Noah Porter’s “Books and Reading: Or What Books Shall I Read and How Shall I Read Them?” (1877) and projects like Charles William Eliot’s fifty-volume Harvard Classics (1909-10). (Porter was president of Yale; Eliot was president of Harvard.) British counterparts included Sir John Lubbock’s “One Hundred Best Books” (1895) and Frederic Farrar’s “Great Books” (1898). None of these was intended for students or scholars. They were for adults who wanted to know what to read for edification and enlightenment, or who wanted to acquire some cultural capital.

      Brief history of the "great books".

    1. https://publish.obsidian.md/danallosso/Bloggish/Actual+Books

      I've often heard the phrase, usually in historical settings, "little book" as well and presupposed it to be a diminutive describing the ideas. I appreciate that Dan Allosso points out here that the phrase may describe the book itself and that the fact that it's small means that it can be more easily carried and concealed.

      There's also something much more heartwarming about a book as a concealed weapon (from an intellectual perspective) than a gun or knife.

  42. Nov 2021
    1. it must be acknowledged that conservatism is never more respectable than in education, for nowhere are the risks of change greater.

      —Charles W. Eliot

      And here I thought I was original in thinking this... :)

    1. very important to see that those schemas structure bigger schemas called frames 00:14:38 now frames were figured out in the mid-1970s in by a number of people but in particular Charles Fillmore a 00:14:51 linguist in my department and one of the world's great linguists figured out that every word is defined in terms of a structure like the frame and let me tell you what a frame is it's very simple 00:15:05 imagine your understanding of a hospital well there are certain roles played by people in that hospital there are doctors and patients and receptionists and nurses there there are rooms like 00:15:18 operating rooms and reset you know there are instruments like scalpels and so on and there are things you know about hospitals you know for example that surgeons operate on patients in 00:15:32 operating rooms with things like scalpels okay every frame is a structure like that and if I say the word surgery immediately everything about it will 00:15:44 come up you'll know that there's a surgeon there's a nurse there's a patient there's an operation going on etc you know something and a lot what one word is defined relative to a frame 00:15:57 what film are discovered was that every word in every language is defined relative to some frame that is a crucial discovery and what's really important 00:16:09 about that and and important for politics is that well consider the following when I teach this the first thing I do is I give my students an 00:16:21 assignment I say ok everybody ready don't think of an elephant you all can do that right you had a problem because the word elephant evokes an image and knowledge of frame in which 00:16:39 you understand what an elephant is and if you negate the frame you have to activate it anyway okay the word activates the frame even if you negate it and that's important in for political 00:16:54 reasons that we'll come back to in a while but words activate frames and fern frames are a ways in which you structure the world you cannot think without 00:17:05 frames you cannot speak without frames being there and those frames are physical there are circuitry in your brain that carries out all those inferences and imposes that structure and that 00:17:20 circuitry once you learn a frame is there mostly for life

      frames are critical for the function of language. We invoke them to invoke a gestalt of experiences of reality, consisting of a group of related associations.

    1. For if I wait out the uncomfortable night by the river,I fear that the female dew and the evil frost togetherwill be too much for my damaged strength, I am so exhausted, and in themorning a chilly wind will blow from the river; 470 but if I go up the slopeand into the shadowy forest,and lie down to sleep among the dense bushes, even if the chill andweariness let me be, and a sweet sleep comes upon me,I fear I may become spoil and prey to the wild animals.’

      There's something about the description here that reminds me of the closing paragraph of Charles Darwin's On The Origin of the Species (p 489):

      It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, [...]

      Both authors are writing about riverbanks, life, and uncertainty.

    1. Contemporary creative works – more adaptation, interpretation, even appropriation, than translation – have also brought the Homeric texts to new audiences. James Joyce's Ulysses is probably the best-known, while Ezra Pound's Cantos, Derek Wolcott's Omeros, Christopher Logue's "Accounts," and Denis O'Hare and Lisa Peterson's, An Iliad, which recently concluded its second run at the Court Theatre, are just a few examples of Homer's influence on contemporary poetry, prose, and performance.

      Examples of Homer adaptations in contemporary culture. They've left off the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? which also comes quickly to mind as does Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and the 2003 film of the same name.

  43. Oct 2021
    1. Interview with Erik Adigard about our collaboration on the eleprocon epiphany since its inception back in 1979 and thoughts since then. Sitting outside the original Dolphin Farm Studio where genesis ignited.

      Each day, there seem to be so many epiphanies. That shift in awareness feels overwhelming. I’m not sure what to do with these realizations, as the next right thing is often uncertain and ambiguous. Charles Eisenstein is drawing me into an exploration of sacred economics.

    1. On Saturday, October 9, after our World Weavers conversation on the topic Matter is Derivative of Consciousness, I was exploring Value Village, a thrift store in Chilliwack, with my wife, Jayne. I came across a book that fits with the theme for our World Weavers conversation on October 23: Shifting from an attention economy to an intention economy.

      Sacred Economics

      By Charles Eisenstein

      Sacred money, then, will be a medium of giving, a means to imbue the global economy with the spirit of the gift that governed tribal and village cultures, and still does today wherever people do things for each other outside the money economy.

      Sacred Economics describes this future and also maps out a practical way to get there. Long ago I grew tired of reading books that criticized some aspect of our society without offering a positive alternative. Then I grew tired of books that offered a positive alternative that seemed impossible to reach: “We must reduce carbon emissions by 90 percent.” Then I grew tired of books that offered a plausible means of reaching it but did not describe what I personally, could do to create it. Sacred Economics operates on all four levels: it offers a fundamental analysis of what has gone wrong with money; it describes a more beautiful world based on a different kind of money and economy; it explains the collective actions necessary to create that world and the means by which these actions come about; and it explores the personal dimensions of the world-transformation, the change in identity and being that I call “living in the gift.”

      (Page XIX)

  44. Sep 2021
    1. n. Dickens saw the emblem of Thomas Gradgrind ("ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to") as the "deadly statistical clock" in his observatory, "which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a coffin-lid". B

      What a great quote to include in the closing!

  45. Jun 2021
    1. He suggests using beasts that stand for letters of the alphabet, andthen assigning images to various parts of each animal—“in the Head, the Bellie, in the Taile, in theformer parte of the legges, & also in the hinder part.”

      I've not often seen (yet?) suggestions of using bestiaries as mnemonic techniques, but here's one in Charles Butler's Oratoriae Libri Duo.

      What other sources used them this way before or after?

      To be clear I'm aware of their use for such, but just haven't read much about them in this period for this particular purpose in these settings.

    2. perhaps the best example of iconoclasm’s influence on early modern English rhetoric isCharles Butler’sOratoriae Libri Duo. Originally published in 1597 as a commentary on Ramus’sandTalon’s work, it was supplemented by Butler with original material and published under its new title in1621 (see Hultzen for commentary and translation).
  46. May 2021
  47. Oct 2020
  48. Apr 2020
    1. He has a utopian personality, and will spend her life trying to realize some aspect of her utopian dream, sacrificing money, time, and energy for a better world.

      Is it because of his personality making him create poem?

  49. Dec 2019
    1. “old familiar faces;”

      This phrase is likely a reference to Charles Lamb's poem "The Old Familiar Faces" (1798): "I have had playmates, I have had companions/ In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days/ All, all are gone, the old familiar faces." If so, it is also a poignant memory of his own family as Victor narrates this tale in which so many family members will be destroyed as a consequence of his own actions.

  50. Aug 2019
    1. Under the Sanders proposal, for example, cost control is secured by a global budget and by imposing Medicare payment rates. Blahous, a former Medicare trustee, estimates that under the Sanders proposal, provider payments would be cut by an estimated 40 percent by usingMedicare payment rates. Using Medicare payment rates throughout the entire American health care economy would hurt patients. Already, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that “nearly half of hospitals, approximately two-thirds of skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), and over 8 percent of home health agencies (HHAs) would have negative total facility margins.”

      The system does not keep a balance between suppliers and consumers. Make up the economy of health care disorders.

    2. The Urban Institute estimates 10-year spending of $32 trillion, only about half of which would be covered under Sanders’ funding options Mercatus Center’s Charles Blahous estimates a 10-year $32.6 trillion increase in federal spending. Even “doubling all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan.” Economist Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University estimates $24.7 trillion in additional federal spending, and also estimates an average deficit of $1.1 trillion per year. The Center for Health and Economy estimates a 10-year net cost of up to $44 trillion, and an annual deficit of $2.1 trillion.

      The estimated costs given by the institutes proved that the "Single-payer" system could not work properly, and it also made the United States a heavy loss.

  51. May 2019
    1. Filippo Argenti

      Filippo is based on a Black Guelph, Charles of Valoi, Dante’s political enemy. Charles of Valoi entered Florence with the other Black Guelphs and destroyed much of the city within a few days. The harsh treatment that Filippo sufferers in The Inferno is payback for an earlier offense that the real life Charles of Valoi had done. In The Inferno Filippo’s violent temper is highlighted in the story as a man who had crossed Dante.

  52. Nov 2018
  53. Apr 2017
    1. How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation! Why should the brain be enclosed in a box composed of such numerous and such extraordinarily shaped pieces of bone? As Owen has remarked, the benefit derived from the yielding of the separate pieces in the act of parturition of mammals, will by no means explain the same construction in the skulls of birds. Why should similar bones have been created in the formation of the wing and leg of a bat, used as they are for such totally different purposes? Why should one crustacean, which has an extremely complex mouth formed of many parts, consequently always have fewer legs; or conversely, those with many legs have simpler mouths? Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils in any individual flower, though fitted for such widely different purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern ?

      Reminds me of Thoreau:

      We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be. The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

    2. If it could be proved that the Hottentot had descended from the Negro, I think he would be classed under the Negro group, however much he might differ in colour and other important characters from negroes.

      He removes this later.

    3. Finally, with respect to the comparative value of the various groups of species, such as orders, sub-orders, families, sub-families, and genera, they seem to be, at least at present, almost arbitrary. Several of the best botanists, such as Mr Bentham and others, have strongly insisted on their arbitrary value. Instances could be given amongst plants and insects, of a group of forms, first ranked by practised naturalists as only a genus, and then raised to the rank of a sub-family or family; and this has been done, not because further research has detected important structural differences, at first overlooked, but because numerous allied species, with slightly different grades of difference, have been subsequently discovered.

      Read by Tamashasky: "Getting away from making flat assertions by defending your claims."

    1. We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be. The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.

      Reminds me of Darwin:

      How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation! Why should the brain be enclosed in a box composed of such numerous and such extraordinarily shaped pieces of bone? As Owen has remarked, the benefit derived from the yielding of the separate pieces in the act of parturition of mammals, will by no means explain the same construction in the skulls of birds. Why should similar bones have been created in the formation of the wing and leg of a bat, used as they are for such totally different purposes? Why should one crustacean, which has an extremely complex mouth formed of many parts, consequently always have fewer legs; or conversely, those with many legs have simpler mouths? Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils in any individual flower, though fitted for such widely different purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern ?

  54. Dec 2015